


when i come around

by gennified



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Family, Gen, Homophobia, little bits of religion, the real pairing here is Alex/Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:22:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26585830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gennified/pseuds/gennified
Summary: They’re all hanging together after practice one day, basking in the glow of getting down another awesome song, when Julie turns to him and says, “Have you thought about going to see your parents, Alex?”“No,” he replies.And that’s the end of that.
Relationships: Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 49
Kudos: 1197





	when i come around

They’re all hanging together after practice one day, basking in the glow of getting down another awesome song, when Julie turns to him and says, “Have you thought about going to see your parents, Alex?”

“No,” he replies. 

And that’s the end of that.

\-----

Except it’s not the end of it at all. 

Because this is Alex, and his brain has never once learned how to shut up. It becomes all he can think about in any free moment his mind has, this all-consuming “what if” that takes over unless he’s keeping his thoughts busy by whaling on the drums. So he does that. A lot.

Luke notices, of course. Reggie probably does, too, but he doesn’t say anything outside of shooting a few concerned glances in Alex’s direction that he’s easily able to brush off. 

Luke is a lot harder to ignore, though, when he corners him while Alex is pacing in the loft one day, running over what he might say to his parents if he could actually speak to them. He’s worked himself almost to tears just holding that fake argument in his head, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when he hears Luke’s voice coming up the stairs.

“Dude, you okay?” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m totally fine,” he replies, turning to look out over the bannister so that Luke can’t see his face. “Just thinking about how they let Disney ruin Star Wars.”

“You never cared about Star Wars, man, that was Reggie’s thing,” Luke says. “Seriously, what’s wrong? Boyfriend problems?” 

Alex’s heart skips a beat when the word ‘boyfriend’ comes out of Luke’s mouth. He’s still not used to hearing it, even though that word is completely true. He has a boyfriend, and they hold hands and kiss and his friends know and support him. (And still love him.) It’s almost wild for him to imagine that level of freedom in his life, and he doesn’t even have to imagine it because it’s _real._

“It’s nothing like that at all,” Alex replies, eventually. “Just thinking about some stuff from before.”

Luke looks at him, seemingly debating whether or not he should push for more. “Okay. But if you ever need to talk, you know we’re here for you. We’re your family, man.”

Alex turns and flashes a grin at him, even if it’s not completely an honest one. “Of course. Thanks, man.” 

\-----

“Did you ever tell your parents that you were gay?” he asks Willie during one of their dates. This time, they are at the Hollywood Bowl, so that Willie can see if he can grind the handrails all the way down to the orchestra pit. So far he hasn’t been successful. 

“Nah, I never got the chance to,” he replies as he sits down in an empty chair next to Alex. “But I don’t think they would have cared. They were total hippies. Free love and all that.”

Alex feels the tiniest smile pull at his lips. “Bet that was nice.” 

“Yeah, it was. They were great.” Willie fiddles with a small dent in his board. “What about you?”

Alex turns his head, looking over at the hills behind the Bowl. He fiddles with his bracelet to keep his hands busy. “My parents weren’t hippies.” 

“I kind of figured that. You’d be wound way less tight if they’d let you smoke a little bit of weed growing up,” Willie replies with a laugh. 

Alex remains silent, his eyes drifting over the Hollywood sign as he remembers the last fight with his parents before he died. He feels Willie’s hand on his own, and looks down to see that he wasn’t fiddling his bracelet anymore, instead digging his nails into his wrist. 

“They were thinking of sending me to one of those ‘pray-away-the-gay’ camps,” he says. “I found the brochure when I brought in the mail.”

Willie sucks in a breath. “That sucks, man. I’m so sorry.” 

Alex just shrugs. “They never got to actually do it, at least.” 

\----

Julie is at school and Reggie is improvising on his bass when Alex dramatically throws himself down on the couch next to Luke. 

“Oh, so you’re finally ready to talk now, are you?” 

Luke really can read him too well. 

“How did you get up the courage to go see your parents?” 

“Ah.” Luke sits up a little straighter. “This is going to be that talk.”

“I mean, you left on really bad terms. And I saw you, it broke you to be there with them after that.” Alex rests his head on Luke’s shoulder. “I keep thinking, if I saw my parents again, it would bring me right back to that last fight I had with them. Our last memories of each other. But I can’t change anything about how that conversation went. It was twenty-five years ago, and now I’m dead.” 

There’s silence in the garage. Reggie has stopped playing, but Alex doesn’t turn to look for him. He can tell he’s close by, hovering somewhere. Luke seems to be really thinking before he says anything. 

“Even with all the fights, all the disappointment, I never doubted that my parents loved me,” he replies and it stings Alex’s heart. Because he doesn’t know if it’s true for his own parents. “I had to see them. I always regretted how I left them.”

Alex doesn’t speak for a long time. He feels a hand on his shoulder, and he knows instinctively that it’s Reggie. 

“You really don’t have to see your parents if you don’t want to. I haven’t gone to see mine,” Reggie points out.

“I just can’t stop wondering if they’ve changed,” admits Alex. “Things are so different now. If I was still alive, I could get married. I never thought that would ever be possible. That was one of the things my mom was so angry about. That I would never get married or give her grandkids.” He feels tears start to form in the corners of his eyes and he blinks them away. “And you’ve seen the kids at Julie’s school. Girls and girls holding hands in the hallways, boys and boys, so many trans kids just being out and proud and just being who they are. I was the only out gay person in our entire grade. It’s completely different now.” 

“Do you think the exposure to all these new attitudes might have changed their minds?” Reggie asks. Alex can tell by his voice that he doesn’t think that’s possible.

“I don’t know. That’s the problem.” 

Silence again. Alex’s brain is just about to start its marathon run through all the different ways his parents could have changed, or worse, stayed the same, when Reggie speaks up.

“Luke and I could go. Without you, first. Just to see. If that’s something you want.” 

Alex sits up a little bit. “You’d do that for me?”

Luke looks at him like that’s the stupidest question he’s ever asked. “Of course we would.”

\----

“Theoretically,” he starts out of nowhere, causing Julie to jump in her desk chair, “if I wanted to find out where my parents were living now, where would I start? Because I haven’t seen a single phone book since I got to 2020.” 

When she’s recovered enough from the fright, she replies, “Theoretically, we would start with Google and then go from there.” 

Alex starts pacing her room, running his fingers through his hair as he tries to get up the courage to just make a decision. Does he want to do this? Does he want to know? Won’t he just be hurt and disappointed in the end?

She watches him, thoughtfully, but doesn’t press. 

“Okay. Okay. Can you help me with that?” 

A soft smile spreads across her face. “Of course.”

\----

They’ve retired to Newport Beach, Julie finds out. Alex’s heart sinks a little. Orange County. The bastion of conservatism in Southern California. Julie tries to persuade him that it’s not like that anymore, that Orange County even voted for Hillary in 2016. “The First Lady?” Alex almost asks, but they have other pressing issues. 

It takes longer to find an actual address. Alex is more than a little freaked out about just how much information is out there on the internet. Can anyone find anyone else? Is that even safe? Does 2020 have a lot of stalkers? But they do find an address, eventually, piecing together pictures of the house from his dad’s Facebook with Google maps.

When they actually see it in person, it seems too small for his parents. With his sister long grown up, and Alex dead and gone, it makes sense that they wouldn’t need that much space anymore, Alex reasons. But he never could handle change well, and this tiny little beach house is a big change from the spacious house in the hills he had grown up in, chasing his sister down the hallway because she had stolen one of his basketballs while their parents screamed at them to knock it off. 

He has his arms around Willie, standing behind him like Willie could shield him from all the bad things in the world. He’s not used to being able to be this affectionate with anyone, but neither of the guys have said anything to him. They won’t, Alex knows. They’re just happy he’s found someone, even if he had to die to do it. 

“Alright, so we’re just gonna pop in, see how things are and then pop out and let you know what we think, okay?” says Reggie, as Luke nods along beside him. Julie couldn’t think of a way to convince her dad to let her go all the way down to Orange County on a school night, but she had sent them all off with hugs and supportive words. 

Alex doesn’t respond, so Willie gives them the go ahead for him. And then they wait. 

He doesn’t know what they are going to find. What if his parents have completely forgotten about him? What if there is no sign that they had a son at all? They were so disappointed when he came out to them. Maybe his death just made it easier for them to forget what a failure he was to them. Were they happy when he died? Did they care?

It’s not more than five minutes before Reggie and Luke poof back out to where Willie and Alex are waiting on the street. Luke’s emotions are hard to read, but Reggie is trying to hide a smile and not succeeding. 

“So, your parents aren’t home right now,” Luke starts, and Alex feels a little bit of the pressure inside him start to release. That’s good, he thinks. He doesn’t have to see them, but he can still see if there is any piece of him at all still left in their lives. “But we definitely think you should go in there and see the place.” 

Alex nods, finally releasing Willie as his life vest. He takes a step back to compose himself. 

“Do you want us to come in there with you?” Willie asks. 

“No… no, if it’s okay, I think I want to go by myself.” 

“Sure,” Willie says, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll all be right here waiting.” 

\---

Alex whooshes himself into his parents’ house, landing in the kitchen. It’s immaculately clean, as he expected from his mother, but out of the corner of his eye, he spots a few pictures stuck to the fridge with magnets. His mom never used to do that, Alex remembers. She always thought that was tacky. 

But there they are. Just a few, mostly of his sister, and god, how much she has grown. She’s a full-fledged adult now, holding a blonde little toddler in one picture. Standing next to the man that Alex assumes is her husband in another. But right there next to the happy couple is a picture of Alex, from when he was ten and his parents had signed him up for Little League. Then there’s another, a picture of him and his sister dressed in their Sunday finest that his parents had taken at the K-Mart in the mall when they were both little. And under that is another picture, this one from Christmas when he was thirteen, sitting behind the drums he had begged and begged for. His first drum set. 

They didn’t forget him.

Feeling a bit lighter than he was before, Alex moves from the kitchen into the next room, the living room. 

A small flat screen television hangs from the wall, surrounded by pictures of their grandkid, and some even of his parents’ themselves, at various weddings and other celebrations through the years. But as he looks around, Alex spots a table filled with picture frames under the window, and he finds himself holding his breath as he takes the last few steps towards it. 

It’s all pictures of him.

There are a lot of old school pictures, but there are more that Alex doesn’t recognize. Framed in the center is a tribute page from what Alex guesses was the high school yearbook from the year he died, filled with pictures of him, Reggie and Luke, with the words “Gone but Not Forgotten” at the top. All over the page, there is writing from his classmates, memories and messages to Alex. The school must have given this to his parents after he died. 

There’s the Sunset Curve demo, resting up against a framed picture of the band. He never gave a copy to his parents, but somehow they managed to get their hands on one, and they cared enough to display it, where all their friends could see. His parents had always been embarrassed of his pursuit of music. But here they were, showing it off. Had they listened to it? What did they think? 

And there is the funeral program. Alex has spent a lot of time trying to not think about what his funeral was like. Or if he’d even had one. But the evidence that he had one after all is right in front of him, confronting him. It almost hurts to see his date of birth and death with just a dash in between. Seventeen years isn't long at all. 

Written on the side of the funeral program, in his mom’s handwriting, are the words “God loves him as he is, and so do we.” Maybe it was something the priest or someone had said, during an eulogy, or maybe it was her own thoughts during the service or after, but whatever it was, she had written it right there. They loved him as he was. They _loved_ him.

There were a few other touches, too. A pair of his drumsticks, resting on the table, were tied together in a faded rainbow ribbon. On one edge of the table, there was an old picture of him and Reggie, playing around before their junior prom and doing an awkward prom couples pose. His parents must have found it when they were cleaning out his room after he died. Did they think that he and Reggie had secretly been dating? They must have. And they put up this picture with everything else all the same. Alex tries to let out a laugh but it comes out as a choked sob. 

His parents did love him. He had spent so long convinced they didn’t. 

There’s a whooshing sound next to him as Willie appears. “You okay, man? It’s been a while. We were kind of worried about you.”

“Yeah,” Alex replies, his eyes never leaving the pictures on the table. “Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s go.” 

\----

The boys take the night off from band practice to give Alex some space to decompress. 

He’s laying on the couch with his head in Willie’s lap as Willie plays with his hair when Julie comes in. 

“Hey Alex, hey Willie.” She can’t actually see Willie, they all know, so Alex’s position must look pretty weird to her, but he can’t find the energy to care. Willie lifts up one of the drawstrings on Alex’s hoody as a sort-of hello, and Julie laughs. “How did it go with your parents?”

“They loved me,” he replies. 

“What? Of course they did, Alex, why wouldn’t they? You’re their son...” She trails off when she notices the look on Alex’s face. She doesn’t really get it. But that’s okay. 

“I didn’t know,” Alex says. “And it’s not okay that they didn’t tell me they loved me after I came out or that they wanted to change me back then. But they’ve had twenty-five years to live in that guilt. That the last time we saw each other, we were arguing about conversion camp. That their son died fully believing they hated him. Can you imagine, twenty-five years of that? Remembering that every time they saw a picture of me? But they still put up the pictures. None of what they did was okay at all, but I think…” He pauses for a moment, drawing up the courage to vocalize something he has been holding on to. “I think I can forgive them now, for everything.” 

Julie nods at his words, her face a mix of sadness and relief that Alex has managed to get some kind of relief. “That’s good. That’s really good. I'm really happy for you,” she says with a smile. She turns to leave, but hesitates for a moment. “I’m going to go back to my homework, but Alex, you know I love you, right?” 

“Me too!” He hears Reggie shout from wherever he was hiding. Of course he had been listening into the conversation. 

Luke looks over the loft. He had also clearly been listening in. “Me too, man.”

Alex hears a whispered “I love you, too” from above him as Willie’s fingers dance through his hair. 

God loves him as he is, Alex thinks, but most importantly, so does his family.


End file.
